Like this:

I’m in a bit of a conundrum when it comes to my blog. First off, I’m a writer–if I wasn’t I wouldn’t use the word “conundrum.” And as a writer I need to find an audience. In the 21st Century, that means the Internet. As an up-and-coming writer, I need a net presence (blog and/or social media) or I’m invisible. So I need to put myself out there, but then I see my hits and follows and like stagnating while others’ seem to skyrocket and I wonder what I’m doing wrong.

I get so frustrated that I don’t want to blog or tweet or post or pin (or whatever) anymore. That’s the other reason why I’ve been so quiet. Yes, I was fighting a bad chest cold for most of May, but the slowdown began before that. Because the burnout began before that.

So what does this have to do with birds?

Two weekends ago, I took a day off, got away from my laptop, and drove to the Finley Wildlife Refuge with my wife and daughter. Birds were everywhere. We could see them flitting from tree to tree, but even when we couldn’t see them we could hear them.

At the first stop, while Julia and Anna had their cameras out waiting to spot a bird on a perch or in flight, I stood still, closed my eyes, and listened.

I heard music, a counterpoint of bird songs in surround sound. And through that wondrous polyphony, God spoke to me.

Listen to “the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” –Matthew 6:26

And I realized that all the worry wouldn’t add one more view, one more click, or one more meaningless web stat. That’s not why I write anyway. I write to capture just a snippet of the profound beauty we all experience in life.

And I was more inspired in that moment than I could be by a year’s worth of tweets or posts. Because in that moment, I got in touch with the Source of everything.

So consider the birds singing, or the leaves whispering their secrets to each other in a nearby tree, or a child praising her Creator in her infectious laugh. Consider the ongoing symphony, sonata, and song multiplied by a million that God conducts for his and our pleasure every day.

And leave tomorrow for tomorrow. That’s how I plan to write, blog, and live from now on.

With God’s help, I pray, at those times that I will inevitably stumble.

There are two different whispers that I’ve heard throughout my life. I wrote about one of them in an essay describing my path to the Catholic Church.

God speaks to us all the time, but he usually speaks in subtle ways. Beautiful whispers that draw us little by little toward him. God spoke to me many times in the most unlikely places, although I didn’t recognize his voice until much later.

There’s another whisper that contends with God. An ugly whisper that feeds our doubts and despair at one moment, and puffs up our pride and self-image the next. A whisper that is confusing because the whisperer means to confuse.

Jesus called this whisperer “the father of lies” and all his whispers are lies. Sometimes he tells us what we want to hear and sometimes he tells us what we dread but everything he says is a lie.

“You are worthless.”

“You are better than everyone else.”

“You will never amount to anything.”

“You can have whatever you want, just take it.”

“Everybody hates you.”

“Everybody likes you.”

“You will die alone and penniless.”

“You will be rich and famous and live a long life.”

It doesn’t matter that his whispers contradict each other. He wants to confuse you, and get you to the point where you don’t know if you’re coming our going. Above all, he has to keep whispering to drown out the other whisper.

Don’t listen to him. Listen instead to the One who tells you what you need to hear.

That one day, we will all hold hands and D A N C E in heaven, like birds on trees, being moved by the warm magnolia breeze, like purple annuals and yellow perennials growing in the same garden of love.